2007: indigenous resistance to Shell in BC, Anti-Canada Day, & ‘In Support of Sabotage’

Methane dis­pute reignites in B.C.
August 22, 2007

A group of pro­test­ers, includ­ing mem­bers of the Tahltan and Iskut Indi­an bands, blocked a road in north­west­ern British Colum­bia yes­ter­day, pre­vent­ing Roy­al Dutch Shell PLC crews from head­ing into a con­test­ed region to do road repair work and reignit­ing a debate over coal bed methane explo­ration in the area.
…
Oppo­nents says coal bed methane projects could pol­lute sur­face and ground water, threat­en fish and wildlife habi­tat, and dis­rupt a remote wilder­ness land­scape. Coal bed methane is nat­ur­al gas found in coal seams. B.C. cur­rent­ly does not have any coal bed methane pro­duc­tion, but the province has voiced sup­port for coal bed gas devel­op­ment.
…
In 2005, 13 peo­ple were arrest­ed at a block­ade at the same site that tar­get­ed For­tune Min­er­als Ltd., an Ontario-based com­pa­ny that has a coal project in the region.

—-

Anti-Cana­da Day in Van­cou­ver
INDIGENOUS DAY OF ACTION AND RESISTANCE

On July 1st 2007, over 200 Indige­nous women, chil­dren, Elders and men (and non-native sup­port­ers) took the streets and the train tracks on a march and block­ade to mark their resis­tance to Cana­da as an oppres­sive force against their peo­ple. The march began at Grand­view Park and pro­ceed­ed down Com­mer­cial Dri­ve to Ven­ables Street where the CN rail lines were occu­pied and blocked for over an hour.

—-

Guelph, Ontario: In sup­port of sab­o­tage, not the AFN

[Con­tributed anony­mous­ly to news.infoshop.org]

June 29th: Today a rail block­ade was set up in Guelph Ontario, but it failed. This was due to a num­ber of com­pli­ca­tions, either way no trains were stopped.

Nev­er­the­less, this is the kind of dis­rup­tion that we strive to cre­ate every day, regard­less of whether it has been called for by sell­out col­lab­o­ra­tors, indi­vid­u­als or sim­ply for our own joy.

We want to make it clear that we do not sup­port the AFN; the ends that they seek through bar­gain­ing with the gov­ern­ment, that is respon­si­ble for the sys­tem­at­ic oppres­sion and exploita­tion of Native peo­ple, our land base, and pret­ty much every liv­ing thing exist­ing on the remain­der of this plan­et.

It is impor­tant to act at every oppor­tu­ni­ty we get to build momen­tum and com­mu­ni­ty, in order to chal­lenge the pow­ers of the State and Cap­i­tal­ism that are inces­sant­ly assault­ing our lives.

We do not act on sim­plis­tic calls to action (for action’s sake), but use these chances to coor­di­nate our efforts and add to the momen­tum we are build­ing with oth­ers, act­ing togeth­er on our desires to rede­fine the con­di­tions under which we live. We do this for our­selves and our allies, not for the dis­em­pow­er­ing polit­i­cal aims of the AFN.

It inspires us to see com­mu­ni­ties and indi­vid­u­als com­ming togeth­er, employ­ing direct action tac­tics in a coor­di­nat­ed day of dis­rup­tion, and acknowl­edge that inac­tion is to aban­don our allies in today’s actions. Unlike the AFN, we sup­port all acts of sab­o­tage that were cre­at­ed today and con­tin­ue to inspire us in our own bat­tles.
To the bar­ri­cades and into the night friends!